As a Canadian who has only lived in the U.S for the past ten years, I confess it took me a while to get my head around the significance of Memorial Day.
My first Memorial Day story is this: I was walking through a small suburban mall-plaza type area in Anaheim. I turn a corner, and whammo! coming towards me is a platoon of immaculately dressed soldiers. In formation, marching precisely along.
Whoa! I hopped out of the way and followed them, to a larger area where there was a small service, with other armed forces personnel, active and retired. Later on I found out it was Memorial Day, honouring the armed forces. Ok, that’s nice. But I still wasn’t aware of the beginning-of-summer aspect of it.
That came a few years ago when we were on a driving trip through Redwood and Yosemite, two of the glorious federal parks above Los Angeles. We set out the week before Memorial Day. It was wonderful. Weather was clear and crisp, everything was open even in quite remote areas deep into the parks. There were no crowds, we had the roads, trails and hotels virtually to ourselves.
Then came Friday. We got on the road that morning and OMG, where did all these people come from?
Eventually we figured out that Memorial Day weekend is the U.S.’s not-really-official-but-effectively-official first day of summer, observed on the last Monday in May, and bringing the first big crowds of the summer to tourist areas everywhere.
Got a good Memorial Day memory or story to tell us? Please share! You, too, all you shy lurkers!
